RANKING: The 10 Most Visited Travel Sites by Latin American Users

What sites do Latin American users consult when planning their trips? How important is each of these platforms, relative to the information they offer? Is it possible to establish their decision-making process when it comes to planning trips? We answer these questions here, using comScore's September 2016 rankings.

During September 2016, 29% of Latin American resident users visited the "travel" category, according to the comScore report.

The Despegar sites (and their Brazilian version, Decolar), attracted 27% of unique visitors, while Expedia, the North American equivalent of Despegar and Decolar, received 11% of the users. Other visitors (mostly Brazilians, probably) chose CVC (which, while it came in ninth on the ranking, received 3% of Latin American visitors in the informed period).

Coming in second, TripAdvisor was visited by 20% of the users.

With respect to search engines that help find the best prices for travel, Latin American visitors chose Priceline, which received 12% of the region's visitors in September.

20% of Latin American visited the LATAM sites for the LanChile and Gol Linhas Aereas airlines,while Uber was the only ranked platform in the ground transportation category.

Finally, the travel portal MSN came in last, with 3% of the visitors.

How do Latin American users plan their trips?

The order that each of these sites and platforms appears on the comScore platform allows us to guess what path users take when planning their trips.

First, they choose destinations and resolve logistical issues (tickets, hotels, transport) through Despegar's sites, a platform which (for many Latin Americans) is the starting point for any destination that they have in mind, as if it were a control panel that allows them a general vision of all aspects of their trips.

In second place, they would seek the opinions of other users on TripAdvisor, to then (after defining the destination and logistics) compare prices on Priceline and Expedia, with the goal of seeking better fares.

Finally, before finishing the operation, they seek rates with direct providers, without intermediaries (explaining the presence of LatAm, LanChile and GOL airlines on this ranking).

Once they have finished this process and made an informed decision, they probably execute the operation through Despegar.com (because of how easy it is to concentrate everything into one platform that is "run by Latin Americans").

Of course, while we can't know for sure if this is the path that all users take, what is certain is that the rankings allow us to establish their priorities when consuming content related to trips and tourism.

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